Media files are often stored on a centralized storage asset in a home/entertainment/business network, where the media files may be serviced or rendered on a variety of devices attached to the network. Typically these rendering devices support one or only a few of the possible universe of formats or codecs available to render the media contents, where the word CODEC or codec may be a combination of any of the following: compressor-decompressor, coder-decoder, or compression/decompression algorithm.
Accordingly, there are various formats into which media files can be translated to or from their native or original versions so that they may be rendered by rendering devices. If a media file is not present on the storage device in the/a format (e.g., codec) supported by the rendering device, it is not presented to the user operating the rendering device. This is a problem, since the user of the rendering device has no idea what content other than that directly support by the device is in his or her digital video/music library.